


Lucas, Forever

by dragoninatrenchcoat



Category: Forever (TV 2014)
Genre: I was going to avoid tagging those because they're spoilers but cmon, Reveal, immortal lucas, they're practically gimmes from the title alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26427688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoninatrenchcoat/pseuds/dragoninatrenchcoat
Summary: He was... alive?He was underwater. He was alive?Lucas swam upwards.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

Lucas broke the surface of the water and gasped for breath, clutching his throat. He tread water for a few panicked moments before realizing that he was hardly in any pain. None, in fact, at least not in the neck; in his extremities there was an awful biting sensation, the kind that warned of distant-looming frostbite. 

There was a beach. Okay. Good. He swam toward it and tried to remember where the pedestrian bridge had been; he couldn’t see it now. Maybe he’d been carried too far downstream while unconscious.

When he reached the shore, he crawled up onto the rough ground and laid there for a long moment, staring up at the glowing New York night sky and catching his breath. It was damn cold. He tried to hug his jacket more tightly around him, but his hand only hit skin. He looked down. 

Naked. He was butt-naked. No wonder he was freezing. The thought hit him dimly, more as a point of curiosity than anything else; compared to dead, being naked was a pleasant dream.

A dream... maybe this was all just a big dream? But he knew that couldn’t be true even as he thought it. He was too cold, too exhausted, too _real._

He had to go to the LAN place, he was missing the raid.

No, he had to call the police, didn’t he? Report what just happened. But his phone was gone; likely sitting with the rest of his clothes at the bottom of the river.

How had his clothes come off in the river, anyway? His jacket, sure, but _all_ of them?

He was cold to the bone now, shivering too violently to maintain his little lay-down on the beach. He forced himself up into a seat, turned around, and saw a small park with a street up ahead. He’d never been naked in public before; he’d never been naked anywhere except bedrooms and bathrooms. Not even a living room had seen his bare ass before this moment, not since he was five or so--excluding his apartment, anyway, which was more of an all-in-one situation.

Police officers headed his way. Good. He wouldn’t need a phone.

#

The novelty of being warm and dry and wearing a comfortable set of NYPD sweats had worn off a little while ago, sometime around the moment he realized that the officer he was talking to--Dundas, according to her badge--wasn’t going to believe a word he said.

“She cut my throat,” he repeated, a little desperately.

“This was on the bridge?” Her voice was flat as she filled out a form on her desk.

“Yes, third avenue bridge over the Harlem.”

“The one seven miles away from where you were arrested.”

“Y-yes.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know, I must have floated in the current.”

She gestured to him. “And you’re fine now, because...?”

He felt his neck. It did feel fine, except for an unfamiliar ribbon of numb skin, like scar tissue.

Officer Dundas stapled something together and handed Lucas a packet. “Here. It’s a summary of your rights, your case information, your fine, your court date, and a bill for the clothes.”

“A bill? But it wasn’t my fault! I told you, I lost my-”

“Lucas?” It was Jo’s voice.

He turned around to see Detective Martinez paused halfway through handing a stack of papers to a different officer at the intake desk. She had her mouth open and her eyebrows raised. The officer in front of her quietly took the papers from her frozen hand.

“Detective Martinez!” Lucas exclaimed.

Officer Dundas stood up. “Detective, you know this man?”

“Yeah, he works in the morgue. What, exactly, is going on here?” She crossed her arms and approached them, eyeing Lucas’s outfit.

“He was arrested for indecent exposure at the East River Park.”

“The East River-” Jo shut her eyes, like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Lucas, I know how much you look up to Henry, but this is hardly the way to emulate him.”

“Wh- Henry?” Lucas blinked. “No, I- can I please tell you what happened? She won’t believe me.”

Jo looked to Dundas, who shrugged and pushed the packet of paper into Lucas’s hands, washing her hands of the matter.

“Alright,” Jo sighed, and gestured for Lucas to follow her. “Only because I could use a break.”

She led him back into the bullpen and brought a chair up next to her desk, motioning toward it as she took her own seat. “Start from the beginning.”

Lucas took a deep breath, and started--again--from the beginning.

#

He’d taken a pedestrian bridge over the Harlem River. Walking quickly, since he’d stayed a bit late at work--not nearly as late as Henry, of course--and was well on his way to missing out on his online plans. If he beelined, he’d probably be able to make it to the 24-hour LAN place in time to relax and get a snack before the raid started.

Two people, a man in a white shirt and a woman with a short ponytail, stood too-close to one another the way that couples did on the side of a bridge, but there was something wrong about it. The man had his back to the railing, the woman pressed up against him. Her hand was in a weird spot: kind of below his shoulder, almost at his neck. And his knuckles were white on the railing. His expression, when Lucas looked for it, was terrified.

They weren’t a happy couple; the woman had a knife to his throat. Lucas barely saw the glint of it in the sunset, a narrow switchblade-looking thing. 

He should have called the police, or at least threatened to; he should have pulled out his phone and made it obvious, from a distance, that he saw her. That’s usually all it took. 

What he did instead, because he was almost on top of them when he noticed, was smack into them full-bodied and shove them apart. He got a good look at the woman’s face when he did that: wild-eyed and pissed. Dangerous. 

“Get out of my way,” she hissed, because Lucas had accidentally situated himself perfectly between them. But now that he was here, moving would be tantamount to murder, wouldn’t it?

(Jo told him it wouldn’t have been, but it was too late by then.)

“Go home,” he told the murderous lady, as if she were simply drunk and could sleep off her rampage. His voice only shook a little; likely due to the fact that he was floating somewhere beyond himself and didn’t have full control anymore. 

“Get out of my way!” she screamed, like a car-tire screech in the New York night, and lunged forward.

Lucas could have lost his courage and fled. He could have ducked out of pure reflex, or shoved back against her, or grappled for the knife. He could have punched her in the face or grabbed the man’s hand and run. 

Instead, a violent stranger rushing toward him, Lucas stood his ground. The only thing he remembered thinking was that if he moved a single inch, the man behind him was sure to be killed.

The woman grabbed Lucas and plunged her knife into his throat, dragged it across with the vicious strength of adrenaline. Pain erupted like fire, and something hot and wet poured down his front, clogged his throat, sprayed across the woman in flecks like a bad horror movie. Out of the corner of his eye, Lucas saw the man take off sprinting, and as he began to choke, he thought he saw sudden, sober dread in the woman’s eyes. 

He fought for breath, and his legs buckled beneath him, and he tried to cough but it wasn’t working the way it should. He was dying, wasn’t he? Not even thirty years old, and he was dying. 

Somewhere, dimly, as he spasmed and struggled to breathe, he felt the awkward weight-and-pressure of being lifted. He forced his eyes open and tried to reach out for the woman’s shoulder. But then she dropped him, and he hit the railing hard in the knees, and then he was weightless and spinning, unable even to scream as he hurtled toward the surface of the water. 

In his last moments, he wondered what Henry’s reaction would be to seeing him on the slab at work.

#

Lucas stopped himself from telling Jo that he’d died. It had felt like it; really, down-in-his-bones felt like it. But clearly that’s not what had happened.

“You know your story has a couple holes, Lucas.” She said it gently. Jo had turned from patronising to patient almost the moment that he’d started describing the violence; right when his voice had begun to shake. 

“I don’t know why,” he said numbly.

“Well, if it had happened as you described it, you would have-”

“Jo!” Henry’s voice erupted behind Lucas. He turned around to see Dr. Morgan walk with lengthy strides into the bullpen. “I had a hunch and ran some of my own tests on Miss Malloy’s stomach contents. Now, if you were an up-and-comer given the sudden opportunity to rub elbows-” He stopped, finally noticing Lucas. His eyebrows twitched closer together. “Hello. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah.” Jo stood up to meet him. “Lucas here was just taking some notes from your book.”

Lucas scrambled to his feet. “No- no, I was not. I was not, that’s not what this is.”

“Lucas?” Henry said with a raised eyebrow, that tone of voice that meant that Lucas wasn’t being totally forthcoming, and crossed his arms. That’s the trick, though, he really was.

“It’s not! I promise-” he turned to Jo. “Look, I know how it sounds, I do. But that lady really did cut my throat open. It was terrifying.”

“Wait, what?” Henry let his arms drop. “Are you okay, Lucas?”

Jo sighed. “He says this happened less than an hour ago, and he seems fine to me. Lucas, you might just need some sleep. You can take a nap on the couch here, if you don’t want to head back out. I can keep the officers from shooing you off.”

“I’m not- it really did happen,” Lucas said, a little desperately, for the millionth time. “I can take you to the bridge, it probably has my blood all over it.”

“What are you wearing?” Henry asked, incredulous, finally taking stock of Lucas’s NYPD sweats.

Jo chuckled. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. He was arrested for indecent exposure at the East River Park.”

“No,” Lucas repeated, “that’s not why I was- that’s not what I was doing there. I don’t know how, I guess my clothes came off when I was unconscious in the river.” He looked frantically between Jo’s uncertain smile and the hand Henry had half-covering his face, like he were ashamed that Lucas would emulate his sleepwalking problem. “I swear,” he repeated.

“Lucas,” Jo started-

Henry said, “I’ll take him home. Lucas clearly shouldn’t be left alone right now, and I should get some sleep anyway.”

“It is pretty late,” Jo admitted. “What were you saying about Malloy?”

“Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow,” said Henry. Jo gave him a frown at that, and so did Lucas.

He’d seen how Henry could get during these cases. Miss Malloy had been an aspiring actor until she’d been stabbed in the back with a stiletto knife. Lucas had been able to tell right from the beginning that this would be ‘one of Those cases’, the ones where Henry would sometimes get a Look in his eye and run off for Jo, leaving Lucas to clean up the body and tidy the paperwork.

During Those cases, Henry almost never let anything wait until tomorrow.

“Alright,” said Jo. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow. Lucas, come with me.”

Lucas started. “I- um, okay.”

Henry led him down to the morgue, instead of out to the street to catch a taxi. The reason was, at first, obvious: he’d left a mess. Not Malloy herself, of course, but a loose collection of samples, beakers, mixes, and piles of paperwork. Since he was there, Lucas helped him out until the place was spotless.

He loved the morgue when it was quiet and empty. It felt more like a... well, like a morgue.

“Lucas,” said Henry, and waved him into his office.

He sat down at his chair, and bid Lucas sit in the guest seat across the desk from him. Henry leaned forward.

“Start from the beginning,” he said.

Lucas groaned. “Again?”

“Yes.” His eyes were sharp; Lucas had seen that look before, directed at a dead body with a less-than-obvious cause of death. “Be certain not to leave out a single detail. Tell me everything.”

Lucas himself had become a puzzle.

“Okay,” he sighed.


	2. Chapter 2

Henry listened, rapt, to the entire story, at times widening his eyes and at times narrowing them. It gave Lucas a little hope that someone might actually believe him, so he wound up telling the tale with more confidence than he had with Jo.

“And then I was arrested,” he finished. “The intake officer had me tell her the whole thing two times over, but I don’t-”

“Look up,” Henry said.

“What?”

“The ceiling. Look at it.”

Bemused, he looked at the ceiling. The same white foam tile as the rest of the precinct, with none of Henry’s eccentric personalizations.

“Okay?” said Lucas. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Alright, look back down again.”

When he did, he saw that Henry looked pale. Almost afraid.

“What?” Lucas asked, as dread seeped into him. Henry was putting Lucas’s puzzle together, and didn’t like what he saw.

“Come with me.” Henry stood up and left the office at his brisk walk, the same one he took whenever he got that Look in his eye and stormed out to find Jo. Except that this time, Lucas was coming with him.

“What is it?” Lucas asked, close on his heels. “Where are we going?”

“The third avenue bridge over the Harlem.”

His eyebrows went up. “Right now?”

Henry glanced toward him. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, not at all!” He had never been in a situation where his own experiences weren’t believable, and at this point, anything Henry could do to turn that around would be amazing.

He just didn’t understand. It had happened; he was telling the story _exactly_ as it had happened. Why did that make it not believable? What ‘holes’ could the truth even have?

#

“What are you thinking?” Lucas asked in the cab ride, because it’d already been ten minutes of silence.

Henry glanced over with that studying look, like he could see something in Lucas that wasn’t normally there.

“You’re thinking something,” Lucas continued. “You have some theory, that’s why you’re taking me out here. Right?”

Henry glanced away.

Lucas added, “I’m telling the truth. You know that, don’t you?”

Henry’s silence chilled him, and Lucas opted to spend the rest of the ride in kind.

#

Henry had the taxi stop about a block from the bridge, and gestured for Lucas to lead the way. “After you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Show me exactly the route you took.”

“Okay.”

He led Henry along the sidewalk, familiar enough although he’d only been joining these raids once a month or so. He turned the corner onto the bridge, glancing back every once in a while to see Henry with his eyes open, studying the place like he’d never seen it before.

Lucas stopped partway across, watching an empty section of railing like it might come to life in front of him. As much as it looked exactly like any other part of the bridge, he knew--could _feel_ \--it had happened here.

But there was no blood.

His heart picked up. No blood. No evidence. Had he dreamed it after all?

“Here, then?” Henry said gently.

“I don’t understand,” Lucas stammered. “It happened- it happened right here. Where’s the blood?” He turned to Henry, who didn’t look very surprised, and felt a stab of fear. “I swear to you, Henry, it happened right here. It really did happen. I’m not making this up.”

Henry’s eyes locked onto something on the floor, behind Lucas, and he pulled a blue nitrile glove out of one pocket in order to squat and search into the niche between the floor and the railing.

“What is it?” Lucas asked. “Blood? Did they miss a spot?”

They must have cleaned it; he didn’t know where the woman would have gotten the time or tools to clean it, to get those dark red stains out of the concrete, but she must have.

Henry stood, inspecting a silver switchblade.

“That’s it,” Lucas said, a jolt to his whole system. “That’s it. That’s her knife.”

But it was perfectly clean.

Henry swiveled his gaze from the blade to Lucas. Not Lucas’s eyes; his neck. Lucas reached up to feel it, the ribbon of scar tissue across his throat, like he _had_ been sliced in the neck and it had long since healed over. But that wasn’t possible. It had only happened tonight, an hour or so ago, maybe less.

He opened his mouth to stammer another explanation, but Henry cut him off.

“Would you like me to take you home? It’s getting late.” He tucked the switchblade carefully into an evidence bag. Lucas didn’t remember seeing him grab one from the morgue.

“Home?” Lucas echoed. “I don’t even know what happened! How would I be able to sleep? What are you going to do with that?”

“I’m going to look for fingerprints. Lucas, I do heartily recommend that you try and get some sleep. Rest assured at least that I believe you, and I’m looking into it.”

Lucas’s heart leapt. “You believe me?”

“I know what it’s like to have your very experiences questioned.” He offered a grim smile, but didn’t leave any time for Lucas to process that. “In any case, there’s always the slim chance that you’ll wake up tomorrow and remember some detail that brings the whole thing into perspective. It sounds difficult, but it’s always better to try and get a full night’s rest in times like these.”

“In times like what? What’s going on?”

Henry put his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “We may just find out tomorrow. Please try to relax, Lucas; it may not seem like it now, but I believe we have time on our side.”

He got a strange look in his eye and let his hand drop, then led the way back toward the street, where they would be able to hail a cab.

#

Lucas had a few messages waiting on his computer when he got home. He typed in a weak sort of apology, ate some toast, then collapsed into his bed. When he closed his eyes, he saw the woman with a short ponytail, her eyes wild with rage, the flash of her knife as she lunged forward.

He rolled over, covered his face with his pillow, sang softly to himself. None of it worked; none of it disabused him of that vision, her leaping toward him, the way the knife had felt when it had dug into him.

He threw aside the covers and stood up, walked the three or four feet into the narrow bathroom, and leaned on the sink. The mirror was short enough that it was the only way he could get his whole head in the frame at once. He stared into his own eyes.

“Stop,” he said, clearly. “I need to sleep.”

His gaze caught on an unfamiliar red line on his throat. He stretched out his neck and felt it with his fingers: a long scar that traced all the way from one side to the other, almost like an over-wrought crease in his skin.

That’s where she’d cut him. It had happened; it had healed immediately, but it had happened.

Maybe the East River was magic.

Lucas groaned and made his way back to bed again, crossing the width of his studio apartment in a couple easy steps before flinging himself onto the mattress.

All he had to do was fall asleep. If he fell asleep, then all of it would go away.

#

Henry couldn’t sleep.

After dropping Lucas off at his place, he went directly back to work with the pocketknife. He scoured it for blood and skin, dusted it for fingerprints. He found the latter, but not the former. None of the former. There wasn’t a shred of Lucas’s DNA on it, as though every molecule of it--if it had ever been there--had disappeared.

This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. There had to be some other explanation for what Lucas had been through tonight.

Lucas was a good person. Honest, hardworking, friendly, genuine. He was often too many of those things at once for Henry, but that didn’t mean Henry didn’t recognize them as good qualities. Lucas lived his whole life, every moment of it; he deserved to go on living it. To grow old in it.

He didn’t deserve this.

Henry submitted the fingerprints, fumbling through the forms and computer programs without Lucas’s assistance, and then there was nothing left to do or unravel.

There must have been something he’d missed. Maybe Lucas had misremembered the severity of his injury; maybe it’d been a small enough blood spill for his assailant to have cleaned up. Maybe he’d lost his clothes somehow and floated downriver, like Lucas himself had assumed.

How could Henry tell him?

And what if he was wrong? Unless Lucas did something incredibly stupid, which itself wasn’t beyond the pale, they simply wouldn’t be able to tell for a decade or so, when--or if--Lucas didn’t age.

Henry could just lie to him. It was tempting. It was beyond tempting; come up with some other reasoning for everything that had happened to Lucas, and let him live on in ignorance until it became imperative. Given the choice, Lucas might even want Henry to have lied.

But Henry couldn’t make that choice for him, and Lucas couldn’t make that choice without knowing at least part of it. The right thing would just be to tell him; anything else would be a breach of trust.

First, however, he had to be absolutely certain.


	3. Chapter 3

Lucas let out a long breath when he got to work. The empty, quiet morgue was calming, in its gently eerie way.

He had faded in and out of sleep for what felt like days, glancing up at the clock desperately as time refused to move forward. Eventually, he’d decided enough was enough, and he was going to get ready for work regardless. 

He’d wound up getting there a few hours early, sure, but what’s wrong with that?

He dropped his stuff off at his locker, pulled on his scrubs systematically, although he probably should have waited until he clocked in. He was paid hourly, and wasn’t supposed to work outside of those hours. All he really wanted was to sit in among the dead bodies, in the quiet, and let his brain twiddle off into one of the horror shorts he always had simmering on a backburner.

It wasn’t perfectly quiet, though; there was a distant, soft sound, like breathing.

A shiver crawled up Lucas’s spine, and he smiled at the thought of there being a ghost in the morgue. That could easily be a film title: THE GHOST IN THE MORGUE _._ A bit on-the-nose, but maybe not if it’s campy.

He followed the sound of breathing, walking as softly as he could, from the lockers, down the hallway, through the fridge room, and out into the lab, where the source of the sound became patently obvious.

Henry wasn’t snoring very loudly, where he sat slumped over at his desk, but sound carried well in an empty morgue.

Lucas edged toward Henry’s office, wondering whether or not he should wake him up. Ultimately, he decided that Henry deserved the chance to get himself together before anyone else wandered in. He pulled the door open and leaned in.

“Dr. Morgan?”

Henry’s head turned in his arms, but he didn’t appear to wake up.

Lucas cleared his throat. “Um. Dr. Morgan.”

How late had he stayed up?

Wary, knowing too-well that some people woke up violently, Lucas crept forward and reached for the shoulder of Henry’s suit jacket.

He hesitated, watching Henry’s face. It was weird, watching Dr. Morgan sleep like that, his face smushed up against his crossed arms, like a regular person.

Lucas shook his shoulder. “Dr. Morgan.”

Henry shot awake and Lucas leapt back to the door, crossed his legs at the ankles and leaned in the doorway like he’d always been there.

“What?” Henry said, his eyes focusing.

“Good morning,” said Lucas. “Late night?”

Henry glanced around himself, then leaned his elbows on the table and dug the heels of his hands into his forehead.

“That bad, huh?” Lucas tried. “Anything I can help with?”

Henry dropped his hands and fixed his gaze on Lucas, who felt that all-over chill again, like Henry were looking all the way through him. He checked his pocket watch, frowned across at Lucas again. “You’re here early.”

“I... couldn’t sleep.” He could still see the murderous woman, could still feel the slice through his neck. He swallowed. “I don’t know exactly what you meant by getting a new perspective after sleeping, but I don’t think it happened.”

“Yes, I was afraid of that.” Henry grimaced. “There’s nothing to be done until the fingerprints come back.”

Lucas stood up. “You found fingerprints?”

“Yes, I put them through the,” he waggled his fingers with that perplexed expression he always got whenever computers were involved.

“You don’t have to wait for the lab guys, I can run the prints. Hold on.” He ducked out of the doorway.

#

“Lindsay Willems,” Lucas read out loud, grimacing at the booking picture that the computer had fished out for him. Repeated stalking and violations of a restraining order had landed her in the system more than once, and the face that frowned at him through the screen was all too familiar.

Henry approached behind him. “Is that her?”

He nodded rather than answer.

“Can you print that for me?”

“Um, yeah, can do. Why?”

Lucas hit _print_ on the rap sheet. When he looked up, Henry was putting on one of his scarves.

Lucas held a hand out toward him. “Whoa, whoa. You’re not going to go _find_ her, are you?”

“I am. I need to know exactly what happened last night.”

“Right, me too, but she-” He stopped himself. He’d almost said _she killed me._ Again. Obviously she didn’t; why would he even have the instinct to say that? “She tried to kill me,” he said instead. “She’s dangerous. Are you going to bring Jo?”

“No, I thought this was something I could take care of myself.”

“At least let me come with you. It’s my fault that-”

“No.” He said it so sharply that Lucas’s mouth snapped shut on its own. Henry fixed his coat. “If she thinks she killed you, then seeing you there will not make our conversation any easier. I will be perfectly fine.”

“What will you even say to her? If she thinks she killed me last night, and you’re asking questions about what happened...”

Henry nodded. “I know. Don’t worry about me, Lucas. I know what I’m doing.” He held his hand out.

Lucas stood for a moment, then remembered the paper and grabbed it out of the printer. Henry accepted it.

“I won’t be long,” he promised. “You have enough work to do while I’m gone?”

“Yes, sir.” Lucas tried to say something else, but nothing came out. Henry was willingly going to trod into a lion’s den for him. He felt like he should stop him, somehow, but he had no idea how. The only thing he could think of was going to tell Jo, but that would take too long.

Henry nodded, and left.

#

Henry didn’t plan on dying, but then he never really did. He recognized at least that he was about to approach someone who’d committed murder last night, or at least tried to.

So, he took a couple precautions. First, leave the pocket watch behind. He’d come too close to losing it too often lately. Then, hide a change of clothes at the East River Park. If he didn’t die, he’d either have to come collect them or write them off.

That seen to, he set off for Lindsay Willems’s last known address.

#

Henry knocked on the door, standing tall. He had none of the authority of the NYPD behind him; he was here on a personal call, and had no plans on impersonating an officer. That meant he needed to come at this from a wildly different direction than he and Jo usually employed.

The door opened part of the way. The woman lurking behind it, all sallow eyes and frazzled hair, looked precisely like the woman Lucas had pointed out.

“Can I help you?” she asked quietly, not opening the door any wider.

“Hello. My name is Richard, I’m a private detective. I’m looking into an urgent matter, and would like to ask you a few questions, if you have the time.”

“I don’t.” She closed the door.

He raised his voice slightly. “Ms. Willems, I’m not with the police and have no intention to prosecute you for any reason whatsoever. I’m afraid this is a rather delicate matter, however, and shouldn’t be conducted in the hall. I can, of course, compensate you for your time?”

She’d killed Lucas last night--had tried to, anyway, he had no guarantee that it had worked, there was still some sliver of hope that this hadn’t happened--and here he was, offering to pay her. What he wanted more than anything was straight answers, however, and he knew that it would be impossible to charge her with murder while the victim was alive and well.

She cracked the door open again, one green-yellow eye appearing through the slit. “Compensate?”

Henry glanced down the hall, then held up a 50-dollar bill. “Just a couple questions, and whatever I hear stays strictly between me and my client. Provided you can extend me the same courtesy.”

Her eye narrowed, then the door opened and she stepped back. Henry nodded to her and walked in.

The place was thin, not unlike the woman herself, an awkward serpentine layout with a couch lining one wall of a hallway-like entrance room. It was lit by a single floor lamp; the doorways leading off of the rectangular room were all dark.

Lindsay closed the door behind him. “What’re your questions?”

Henry cleared his throat and stood before her. “My client has a vested interest in the... wellbeing... of a certain young man. To speak of it circumspect, there is a healthily growing company in the young man’s name which is set to pass over to my client in the unfortunate circumstance of the young man’s death. I have been... tailing the young man for some time, but last night I’m afraid I lost track of him. I have since become aware of a certain altercation on the third avenue bridge over the Harlem River.”

She tensed. If she had a gun, Henry might find himself suddenly thankful he’d stowed those clothes. But she didn’t reach for anything.

He continued, “I would like to remind you that I am in no way affiliated with the police, and have no intention of telling anyone save my client what you tell me today. I’m going to pay you no matter what your answer is; I’m only looking for the truth.”

She nodded.

“The young man in question is tall, thinly-built, and would have been wearing a leather jacket and a shoulder bag. My question is this: can you tell me if he’s certainly dead, or are you not absolutely sure?”

She crossed her arms and looked him over, trying to get a read on him.

“If he’s certainly dead, then my client can proceed with their plans without fear. However, if I’m unable to determine whether he’s died or simply missing, my client might risk betrayal upon his return. Do you understand? I only need you to tell me which route I face.”

Finally, she said, “What made you come to me?”

“There are cameras on either end of the bridge. You and the young man were each seen entering one side; only you were seen exiting the other.”

She wore a sour frown. “Hmm.”

Henry took two fifties out of his wallet and set them on the seat of the couch; if a coffee table had been placed in front of it, there wouldn’t have been room to get by.

Lindsay eyed the cash, then nodded. “He’s dead.”

Dread seeped into him.

“Are you completely certain?” Henry asked. “If there’s any slight possibility that he still lives, then I need to know about it.”

Her mouth twisted. She thought for a moment, and nodded, a shadow passing over her features. “I’m certain. He’s definitely dead.”

Definitely. His heart went cold.

Henry forced himself to smile. “My client will be very interested to hear it. Thank you for your help, Ms. Willems.”

He felt sick, like he was thanking her for what she’d done to Lucas. He felt her eyes follow him as he let himself out of her apartment.

#

Lucas reread the same form for the third time.

He couldn’t focus. Henry had gone and put himself in danger, and Lucas had just let him do that? He hadn’t even gone to Jo. Henry had practically leapt at the chance to throw himself into harm’s way for Lucas’s sake, and Lucas had waved him along.

If anything happened to Henry, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.

New footsteps on the tile. Lucas looked up to see Jo beelining for him.

He sat up and adjusted his seat, then pretended to read the form, like he hadn’t noticed her. She stopped next to his desk and, belatedly, he looked up.

“Um. Detective Martinez, hi.”

“Hi, Lucas,” said Jo uncertainly. “Where’s Henry?”

“Dr. Morgan... stepped out. For a second.”

“What? Why? He’s the one that wanted to speak with me this morning.”

Lucas struggled for an excuse--then he was saved from the ordeal by a familiar saunter, the back-and-forth swish of an expensive coat.

Jo followed his relieved gaze, and Henry’s gait faltered.

“Detective,” said Henry.

“Henry, there you are. You wanted to talk to me about Malloy?”

He blinked. “Oh, yes. There were traces of charcoal in her stomach. Lucas, I need to speak with you.”

Lucas stood up abruptly, his chair scraping loudly on the tile floor. He winced.

Jo glanced between them. “What’s going on?”

Lucas said, “Henry was looking into my-” while at the same moment Henry said, “Nothing of importance.”

They watched one another for a moment.

Jo raised her eyebrows. “Okay. Traces of charcoal, noted. Let me know when you want back in on the case, Henry.”

“I won’t be long,” he said. She frowned at him, but left.

“What was that?” Lucas asked. “What’s going on? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I need to speak with you privately.” He pushed past Lucas and entered his office. Lucas, nonplussed, glanced around the morgue before following.

“Okay-?”

“Shut the door, please.”

Lucas shut the door, growing more nervous with each turn Henry took in his pacing. He opened his mouth to ask, but nothing came out. Henry had found something out at Willems’ place, something he didn’t like. Had none of it happened? Had Lucas gone insane or something, and Henry couldn’t figure out how to tell him?

Henry stopped pacing and turned toward Lucas. “I don’t have to tell you,” he said.

Lucas frowned. “What? Why not?”

“No, that isn’t what- I mean you don’t need to hear it immediately. It can wait, if you prefer. I would prefer it, if I were you. That is; I have it, and I know I would have preferred not to know for as long as possible.”

Lucas tensed. “What is it, am I sick or something?”

Henry very clearly bit his tongue, then elected to pace again. “In a manner of speaking. I have a... very unique condition, and based on what I’ve seen today and last night, I’ve grown concerned that you might also have it.”

The phrasing worried him. “What, is it contagious?”

“Not at all. Not in the slightest. At least, not as far as I’ve been able to...” he trailed off, thinking. Then he sighed. “In any case, this is something about which very little is known. If it is different for you than me, if there are undiscovered rules or paradigms, there’s no way to know other than a very risky trial-and-error.”

“Henry, you’re freaking me out.”

Henry stopped and fixed him with a serious look. “I mean it. I don’t have to tell you. Knowing... it changes everything. This can wait a while, and you can have a precious few more years of a normal life. I really recommend it, Lucas.”

His heart twisted in fear. “What, am I dying?”

“Quite the opposite,” Henry said gravely. “Please. Ask me not to tell you, and life can go on as normal for a while longer.”

“Wait- you’re putting this on _me?”_

“I can’t make this decision for you.”

Lucas watched him. He could see it in Henry’s eyes: the hope that Lucas might ask him not to say it, the hope that ‘life could go on as normal for a while longer’.

But how could he ask that? How could Lucas allow something so apparently huge into his life, just to stand there and willingly ignore it?

“Tell me,” he said. “I need to know the truth.”

Henry let out a sigh. “I was afraid you’d say that. Come along, then.”

“What?” He turned as Henry headed for the door. “Come along where?”

“I’d rather leave the precinct for this conversation. Don’t worry, Lucas; I won’t dock the hours from your pay.”

“Hours? Doc, what do you have to say that you can’t-”

“Come with me.”

“But Dr. Morgan, Malloy’s paperwork-”

“Come with me, before I lose my nerve.”

Lucas met Henry’s uneasy gaze with his own wide eyes. Henry, uneasy? Henry Morgan, losing his nerve?

What had happened last night? Had Lucas made it all up after all? Was this Henry’s way of gently letting him know he’d gone insane?

“Okay,” he said nervously. “Right behind you.”

Henry tightened his jaw, nodded, and led the way out.


	4. Chapter 4

Henry refused, again, to speak in the taxi, mentioning only that they needed a place with ‘utmost privacy’. He seemed to have already had such a place in mind; he’d given an address to the driver with hardly a moment’s hesitation, and when they arrived, he paid and hopped out and had the door to the antiques store half-open before Lucas put together that they’d stopped moving. 

The antiques store? That was Henry’s idea of ‘utmost privacy’?

Abe shot up from his seat behind the desk when they entered. “Henry!” he exclaimed. “I was worried sick. Why didn’t you come home last night?”

“I promise to bring you fully up-to-speed, Abe, but for now I have something I must discuss with Lucas. We will be in the laboratory.”

“Okay. Just glad to know you’re alright.”

Henry successfully stunned Lucas when he opened a secret trapdoor underneath the carpet. He had a secret lab basement. Of course he did.

“Lucas,” Henry called, and Lucas remembered himself and followed.

The basement was exactly what he’d hoped it would be. Lined in Henry Morgan’s signature paneled wood and laden bookshelves, it was askew with various tables and implements. A locked cupboard with a glass front betrayed a selection of chemicals in handlabeled jars, and at the back of the room was an honest-to-God blackboard covered in Henry’s elegant handwriting. It was incredible.

A  _ thud _ denoted Henry closing the trapdoor after him. He came down the stairs and stopped when he saw Lucas. 

Like he was losing his nerve. 

“Alright, what is it?” Lucas forced himself to say.

“It isn’t too late,” Henry said as he crossed the room. He found two chairs beside something that looked more like a desk than a table, and offered one to Lucas. “We can go back to the precinct. This conversation can wait a few years.”

“No, Doc.” Lucas remained standing; too much energy to sit. “I asked you to tell me. Tell me, whatever it is. I just need to know I didn’t make it all up.”

Henry’s jaw tightened and he leaned back on one of the tables, crossing his arms. “You didn’t make it up, Lucas. It happened, exactly as you remember it.”

There was a somber note to the words, and a knowing look to his eyes. Lucas felt a chill.

“You died, didn’t you?” Henry said quietly.

Lucas nodded slowly. He had never said that out loud, he’d only thought it. But it had _ felt _ like dying, somewhere in the pit of him; not in an ‘oh this is terrible’ sort of way, but in an ‘I’ve literally crossed over to the other side’ sort of way.

“Strange, how certain it feels,” Henry‘s voice was dark. “Even when it could plausibly be something else. When you drown, alone in the ocean, and you come up again, it should be simple enough to write off as a  _ near _ drowning. But you can feel it, right down to the core. You died. And you came back.”

Lucas stiffened, watching Henry, but he looked dead serious--pun not intended.

Henry motioned behind him. “You should sit down.”

Lucas glanced back, and saw the chair Henry had offered him. Unable to speak, he decided this time to take the seat.

“What I’m about to tell you,” said Henry, “you must swear to me you’ll never tell another person. Not one other person, except for very extreme circumstances such as this one. This isn’t only for my sake; it’s for yours, too. You must never tell anyone, not even someone you might otherwise trust. It  _ will _ end badly for you. Do you understand?”

Lucas tried to say something, to make a joke, but the words died against the grave look in Henry’s eyes. Instead, he nodded.

“I need you to say it.”

He unstuck his mouth. “I- I promise. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Not one person.”

“Not one person, I promise.”

Henry let out a long, even breath. Then his words came out all at once, like he was afraid that they might stop if he slowed down.

“I was once a doctor on a trans-Atlantic ship. The crew was worried that one of the... passengers might have had a highly contagious disease. If it was true, it would have been a death sentence for nearly everyone onboard. I personally looked over the man and decided that those fears were unfounded, but by then, the panic had set in, and the captain wasn’t going to take any chances. I--and very likely the passenger as well--was shot and thrown overboard.”

“You were _ shot?” _ Lucas exclaimed.

“Point-blank range, in the chest.” He indicated the spot through his shirt. “I was dead before I hit the water.”

“You mean... you...”

“That’s right. I recognized what happened to you because it had happened to me.”

“Well- that’s- amazing!” Lucas sat up straight in his chair. “This is incredible! If we can find other people it’s happened to, maybe we can figure out why, and-”

“Lucas. Before you finish that thought, let me tell you the rest.”

His mouth closed again.

“This was not a one-off occurrence. Not for me. I don’t want to assume to know anything about  _ your _ condition, because the stakes are so high, but if it’s as much like mine as I fear...” He stopped, wetted his lips. “Lucas, this is a permanent thing. A very permanent thing. Since the day I was shot, I have stopped aging. I have died many times and always come up naked in the water afterward. I have lived in excess of a standard lifetime, and so far, I see no end to it distant on the horizon.”

Lived in excess of a lifetime?

“Wait,” Lucas said, rubbing his sweaty palms on his pants again, thinking he must have misheard. “When was that? When were you shot?”

Henry hesitated, watching him.

“1814.”

_ 1814. _

Two hundred years ago.

Lucas’s brain recategorized Henry, from ‘brilliant weirdo’ to ‘two hundred years old’, and it really wasn’t that hard. The way he spoke, the way he dressed, it all just sort of clicked into one neat little picture.

Then the implication hit him, like a sack of bricks to the chest. Henry was saying that this might be what had happened to Lucas.

He might not age. Or die. Ever.

No, this was impossible. This was all impossible, wasn’t it?

Henry crossed to sit in the chair beside Lucas, and leaned in toward him. “This is not a guarantee. I’ve only been able to study myself-” he paused, an uncomfortable look in his eye. “I have no way of knowing if you might exhibit the same symptoms, as it were. The only safe way to be certain is to wait ten years or so and see if you age.”

“Ten years?!”

Henry offered a shrug. “If you have what I have, then time is on your side. In the meantime, we can return to work. You can live out your life here as you always have until that time has passed.”

Until.

Lucas stood, panic lighting him up with electric energy. “If I have what you have,” he echoed, “I’ll have to- to _ up and leave _ in ten years?”

“Maybe longer, depending on how gracefully you can pretend to age.” Henry stood to meet him. “Lucas, I understand how you feel. I understand it all too well. But please remember what you promised me. If you tell anyone, even someone you trust, it can go very badly. _ Believe _ me. It isn’t a mistake you make more than once.”

“But- wait- what about Abe?” He gestured upstairs, feeling light and outside-of-himself. “You told him you’d bring him up to speed. Was that about this? Does he know?”

Henry pressed his lips together. “Yes, but that was an extreme circumstance.”

“What, being _ roommates?” _

“Abe is... my son.”

Lucas faltered, staring openmouthed at him.

Henry cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to spring this on you all at once. I thought it would be a breach of trust if I withheld this, no matter my reasons.”

“That’s.... this... this is why you didn’t want to tell me. This feeling, right now.”

“Yes.”

Lucas wanted to say all this was some massive, terrible joke, but he had _ died. _ Henry was right: it was a certainty, a down-to-the-core-of-you knowledge that he had died and come back.

He nodded. “I... I have to go,” he said, aridly. “Mind if I take the rest of the day off? I’ve got some PTO saved up.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and climbed the stairs, pushed the trapdoor open.

Henry met him at the top, in the antiques store--how many of these were antiques, and how many were Henry’s? Was there a difference?--and stopped him.

“Lucas,” he said, “don’t do anything rash. I can’t be certain yet that yours is exactly like mine, and I won’t have you losing your life because of my own mistake.”

“I won’t, Doc. Straight home for me. Maybe a grilled cheese. A movie marathon. You know.” He glanced at Abe, who watched them both with interest, and found he didn’t have any words. What would that be like? Having a son only to watch him out-age you?

Maybe he’d find out some day.

He let out a little wave and a little strangling sound, then half-fell through the door and started the walk home.

#

Immortal.

Henry hadn’t used the word, but that was the right one, wasn’t it? ‘I have died many times’, ‘I have stopped aging’, ‘I see no end to it’. Those things put together spelled ‘immortality’.

In fiction, immortality was usually pretty cool. Sure, the immortal character tended to have a tortured past or whatever, but they could do stuff like live underwater, save people’s lives, and win the stock market, depending on the specific kind of immortality that the fiction used. This one seemed like it had real death sprinkled throughout it, so maybe the ‘live underwater’ part wasn’t feasible.

But Henry had given his little speech with the kind of sobriety that doctors used when they told you you had a terminal disease, like there was nothing good about it at all.

Henry was two hundred years old. Abe was his  _ son _ .

Was that why he hadn’t been afraid to go check out Ms. Willem’s place by himself?

He’d also said ‘this is not a guarantee’. There was always the possibility that Lucas’s experience had been a one-off, a single second-chance; they’d have to wait a  _ decade _ to find out.

Unless Lucas did something stupid.

He adamantly didn’t want to. So long as he didn’t die again, so long as he didn’t put himself in danger, then there was still the possibility that his ‘condition’ was different than Henry’s. That he wouldn’t have to abandon his entire life, his friends and family, the moment they began to outgrow him.

Why couldn’t he tell them? Not his coworkers or acquaintances, obviously, but his best friends? His parents? Henry had told his son, hadn’t he?

‘ _ Believe _ me,’ Henry had said. ‘It isn’t a mistake you make more than once.’

He’d told the wrong person, once. Lucas thought he could see it, looking back at Henry’s expression. He’d let someone in, someone that he’d thought he could trust, and he’d paid the price for it.

Why hadn’t Lucas just let the stranger get killed?

He stopped and leaned against a streetlight, feeling sick. Had he really just thought that? Would it have been worth letting someone _ die _ just to avoid living forever?

Living forever. That was a nice way of thinking about it, wasn’t it? Not ‘disappear from everyone you love in ten years’, not ‘terrible things will happen to you if you tell the wrong person’, but a hopeful little ‘live forever’. 

Movie marathons that lasted weeks on end. He could learn the sword, archery for the hell of it--he could even go to medical school. He’d written off the possibility as too time- and money-intensive for something he only had a partial interest in, but if he had decades to save up the cash and decades more to waste, then why not? He could be a medical examiner in his own right, cutting apart dead bodies, bringing them back to life with his tales and deductions.

That’s why Henry was so smart, wasn’t it? All that experience, all that time to spend studying.

Lucas forced himself to get moving again. He had to get home; he’d be safe at home. He could wrap a blanket around himself and dive into a fifth replay of Resident: Evil 4, or hop online and grind mindlessly for a while in FFXIV, and pretend that nothing had happened at all, like he was just taking a mental health day from work.

Yeah. That sounded like exactly what he needed right now.

#

“What the hell was that about?” Abe asked, the moment the door shut behind Lucas. “Where were you all night? Did something happen?”

“Yes,” Henry sighed, haggard. “Something happened.”

He fell into a seat, knowing he had to head back to work, but his legs wouldn’t support him any longer. He’d been operating off of adrenaline since the moment Jo had said ‘East River Park’, and it all fled him at once.

Abe didn’t need to prompt him again; the story came out on its own, after a moment’s lingering silence. He said all of it, retelling almost beat-by-beat, and by the end of it he’d regained enough energy to start pacing again. His voice rose up gradually into a rant, a near-panic raving.

“I know I shouldn’t have told him,” he concluded, stopping his pace at the shop window, staring out into the street. “I tried to convince him not to let me tell him, but I knew it was a lost cause. He’d begun to think he was insane. You could see it in his eyes. But damn, I wish I could have kept it from him for just a while longer.”

The silence was stark in the absence of his voice, the ranting that had occupied the room. He rubbed one hand over his mouth, nervously, staring out into the street.

“Wow,” Abe breathed. “That’s... Henry, that’s amazing.”

He whirled around. “What? No, it’s terrible! Lucas doesn’t deserve this!”

Abe rounded the desk. “I know, I know, but don’t you see what that means for _ you?” _

“I don’t care about that, Abe-”

“Let me stop you right there.” He came to a halt in front of Henry, using his all-too-familiar ‘I’m smarter than you’ look, the expression that all parents were doomed to encounter once their children realized that they were human, rather than beacons of authority. “You’ve dedicated your life to being selfless, and that’s great and all, but let me be selfish for you for a second.”

Henry shut his mouth. As much as he hated it, when Abe made that look he usually turned out to be right.

“You’ve only ever heard of one other immortal, right? And that guy’s insane. This is really getting to you, Henry; not just the caller, but all of it. The moving around, losing all your friends. I know it is, you don’t have to lie to me. Ever since Mom, you’ve been trying to hide more and more. It’s not just that you don’t make friends, it’s that you push them away when they come to you.”

Henry crossed his arms, uncomfortable. Abe sighed.

“I know you don’t like talking about my death-”

“Abe, I don’t think-”

“-but I know you think about it. We both do. You don’t _ talk _ about the elephant in the room, but everyone knows it’s there. I know you’re not in a hurry to start another family after Mom; you’ll get there eventually, because forever is a long time, and me and Mom will understand. We always have. But I can tell it won’t be anytime soon, and it doesn’t need to be. What you _ do _ need is a friend. A good, close friend. A _ lasting _ friend, someone you can keep around for more than ten years. Lucas can be that friend for you.”

“Abe, you’re all the friend I need.” It sounded hollow coming out of him, considering the morbid topic Abe had led with.

“For now, sure,” he answered, which was like a blow to Henry’s heart. “But honestly, even though I know everything about you, I don’t  _ know _ everything about you, not the way Lucas will if you’re right about him. He can be your partner in this. You can help each other out. Maybe you can team up against that anonymous caller.”

“I don’t want Lucas involved in that. I don’t want to give the caller the slightest inkling that Lucas exists, if I’m right about him.”

Abe threw up his hands. “Good point, I won’t fight you on that one. Just think about what I’ve said, alright? Sure, this might suck for Lucas, as much as it sucks for you. But there’s no controlling that. If it happens, it happens. Personally? As callous as it might sound for me to say it, I’m glad.”

Henry watched Abe’s sad smile, the hand that reached out to hold Henry at the shoulder.

“And I’m not taking that back,” Abe added softly.

Henry opened his mouth, but Abe pulled him into a hug before he could respond. When they pulled apart, Abe patted him on the back and gestured to the door.

“Heading back to work, weren’t you?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Moving slowly, he picked up his coat and left.

Was Abe right? Should he be happy to have someone like Lucas on his side?

No. Abe might have had a point; he might even be justified in feeling happy for Henry. But Henry refused to join him. He couldn’t bear to look at what had happened to Lucas--if it had happened--and be thankful.

He shrugged into the coat, and raised his arm for a taxi.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was sort of trying to write a sequel, but all my additional thoughts about this story boiled down to about a thousand words (and without an internal structure) so I decided to tack it on as a chapter 5 instead. It isn't like it's going to break the perfect ending that was the last chapter, anyway, and imo it leaves it on a slightly better note.

Lucas woke up the next morning and remembered a detail that put the whole thing into perspective.

Being immortal was badass.

He’d spent the entire workday moping and agonizing over this massively disrupting thing that’d apparently happened to him, playing and replaying Henry’s grave lecture in his head, the serious look in his eyes. He’d tried so hard to picture the terrible things that might’ve happened to Henry somewhere in the past two hundred years that’d given him such a hard stance on secrecy and running away; he’d tried  _ so hard _ that somehow, he’d skipped straight over the ‘two hundred years’ part.

_ Dr. Morgan was two hundred years old! _

That’s why he had that cool pocket watch. That’s why he dressed the way he did, why he _ acted _ the way he did. That’s why he was so close to Abe, despite Abe not being his father--because _ he _ was  _ Abe’s _ father.

Henry had seen the invention of the airplane. TV. Computers! Henry could have watched the first moon landing live! He’d watched the world invent vaccines and eradicate polio, and tamp down on tuberculosis, and split the atom--if he’d died the first time in 1814 and hadn’t aged since, that meant he would’ve been born around 1779, which didn’t exactly mean that he could’ve met George Washington unless he was supremely lucky, but it did mean that he technically predated the  _ United States. _

What could Lucas see, if Henry was right about him? What might he be able to witness with his own eyes? If he was still kicking around _ two hundred years _ from now, what inventions would he wind up predating?

Staring at the ceiling of his apartment, his mind filled with all this amazing potential, Lucas muttered, “Henry Morgan, I’m going to kill you.”

Then he laughed at his own joke.

#

Henry arrived at work early the next day. He’d tried to return to Miss Malloy’s case with his usual gusto after the conversation with Lucas, but Jo had been able to tell that his head wasn’t in it. She’d only asked once if he was alright, but she’d watched him the rest of the day, clearly wondering when he would snap back into focus.

He was relieved when Malloy’s murderer had turned herself in, especially once he got a chance to review her confession and line it up with what he knew about the case. It was rare indeed that a murderer would grow a conscience after the fact and decide to make the right choice. Incredible when it happened, but rare.

“Looks like you’re off the hook,” Jo had told him with a raised eyebrow. “Maybe you should take a day off?”

“Nonsense,” he’d replied, with a smile that he didn’t entirely feel. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Now it was tomorrow, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have taken it off.

He hung his scarf up in his office, shrugged into his lab coat. Lucas had already prepared his list of names for the day; he picked up the folder that waited on his desk--

\--wait, Lucas?

Henry glanced up, and was surprised to see Lucas leaning in the doorway as if nothing at all had changed. The only evidence that the previous day had happened at all was the red line on Lucas’s neck, peeking out over the collar of his scrubs.

Lucas smiled. “Morning, Doc. Looks like we’ve got a weird head injury today. Seems a bit murdery to me, eh?”

“Lucas,” Henry said, taken aback. He studied Lucas’s body language, his easy smile. “I didn’t... expect to see you today. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Actually, I’m great. Do you mind?” At that, he gestured to the door that he leaned against, holding it open.

“Oh- of course not. That is, come in.”

Lucas shut the door, checked nonchalantly for anyone watching through the window. Then he stepped closer and leaned forward, over the desk.

“Are you insane?” he hissed.

Henry’s eyebrows shot up. “I-”

“You think I’ve become _ literally immortal,” _ he whispered the two words as though he were afraid the room had been bugged, “and _ that’s _ how you decided to tell me?”

“How else would I have done so? Where else could I have taken you?”

Lucas waved one hand. “No, no, not that. You- you sat me down and _ lectured _ me like I were some dying patient of yours. You scared me out of my mind!”

“Well, yes, of course. There was no other way-”

_ “My ass _ there was no other way!” He looked surprised at himself, and hastily added, “Sorry, Dr. Morgan. I just mean- look, you had some good points, but-” He leaned forward, whispering again.  _ “Having conquered death _ is actually--objectively-- _ badass.” _

Henry let out a long breath, dropping his shoulders. He set the folder on the desk. “I know it may seem that way, Lucas-”

“Yes, because it _ is _ that way.”

“-but you’ll change your mind when you reach my age, I promise you.”

“Yeah, and how old is that, exactly? How much stuff have you gotten to do that no one  _ your age _ would’ve been able to do? Don’t you get that? If you weren’t-- _ like this--” _ He gestured to Henry indiscriminately-- “you would never have- have been able to fly! Or have a conversation over the phone! Or sent an email!”

“To be frank, Lucas, I have never sent an email, and I have no designs on doing so.”

Lucas scoffed. “You know what I mean.”

Henry forced himself to concede the point. He folded his hands before him. “Yes, I do. Although it seems at times that the sheer pace of human invention is as terrifying as it is thrilling. But is that a fair trade for a proper life, Lucas? Is it worth being forced to let go of everyone you’ve come to care for, to abandon your dreams of love and family?”

“You have family.”

He glanced through the window to the morgue, leaned closer to lower his voice. “I have a son. That is one person. I love Abraham and am determined to spend as much time with him as possible, but far and away are any fleeting hope that he might outlive me, as any child should. And when he does-” the word caught in Henry’s throat, refusing to be said. The very thought was a raw nerve, a pain that drilled down to his heart. He shut his eyes for a moment, collecting himself.

When he opened them, Lucas had a somber expression. Henry sighed.

“I’m not trying to convince you that you should feel terrible,” he felt the need to say. “If you feel ready to return to work, then that’s your decision. I just... I want you to look at this from all directions.”

“You should, too,” said Lucas quietly. Then he gestured to the list. “There’s the weird head wound, and what looks like a case of exsanguination. Should be an interesting day.”

Henry only nodded. He felt he should say something more, but couldn’t put together the appropriate words by the time Lucas disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly the way this story is going I wouldn't be surprised if I kept adding a random chapter once every 6-12 months


End file.
